Dr. Lewis "Terry" Dibble, a scholar with a long-standing interest in how technologies reshape human thought, offers a nuanced perspective on the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into higher education. His approach is not one of blanket acceptance or outright rejection, but rather a thoughtful exploration of when and where AI can serve as a valuable tool, and when its overuse risks diminishing essential human capacities.
Terry Dibble
Senior Lecturer, English
Division of Liberal Arts, IU Columbus
"It's definitely like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I'm getting a dual personality: In courses like philosophy, I mostly discourage AI. Then there is my professional writing course," notes Dibble. "If you're going to be a successful person, you are going to be working somewhere where you will be using AI ... and there's a whole lot of rewriting and revising there, and AI can help you with that."
Dibble's interest predates the current hype. Around 2016, he noticed the effects of digital abundance on society and began thinking about how people organize cognition amid overflow. As a nineteenth-century communications scholar, he also sees today's moment inside a longer arc of upheavals (steamboat, railroad, telegraph, steam press) when people felt both overwhelmed and full of huge hopes. Looking to what the past can teach our present, he is working with his students to figure out what role AI should have in his teaching and their learning.
The "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" pedagogy
Dibble intentionally varies AI's role by course, tailoring its integration to the specific learning outcomes. In his philosophy course, Dibble mostly discourages AI for core philosophical understanding, but he does encourage its use as a scaffolding tool to help students understand original philosophy texts. Students often struggle with "flowery and hard to understand" language (e.g., John Stuart Mill).
Still, the reality is that some students arrive underprepared as readers and, paradoxically, lean on AI instead of engaging with texts, producing a "terrible standoff" where they neither read the actual text nor understand what AI produces. Although he has seen blatant misuse, Dibble is wary of surveillance-heavy responses. Instead, he plans live demos where he asks AI to "boil it down so a high school student could understand it," then probes what the boiled-down version is missing to spark deeper discussion.
Conversely, in his professional writing course, Dibble openly encourages AI use from the outset. From day one, students may use AI for brainstorming, adapting, and revising content, as in real workplace practices. He gives "quite a bit of leeway" and then coaches students on how to use AI well. Teaching this skill is now part of the course, aligning directly with the course outcomes.
The real risk: losing the "life of the mind"
Dibble worries less about any single tool than about habits of reliance. He stresses the need for more information about students' experiences and perspectives regarding AI. Class check-ins have been helpful in gathering these perspectives. For example, one student singled out Consensus as a favorite because it looks up peer-reviewed articles, answers, and then says, "go and read this." The student liked using Consensus because "It treats [them] like a grown-up and doesn't usually hallucinate." (Note: Consensus is not an IU-approved tool. View the list of IU-vetted tools and resources on the AI at IU web page.)
He highlights that a significant issue is that the "overuse of AI is just shutting a lot of our students out of the life of the mind in general," even if some studies show slight gains in essay writing. The aim, then, is to use AI to think better, to extend, not erode, students' cognitive development. In particular, he sees the importance of teaching AI prompting as a college-level skill that takes thought and self-awareness and some patience.
To colleagues who are hesitant, his advice is pragmatic:
First, accept that it's going to change. Second, you won't be able to stop your students from using it, so channel it. Third, go and experiment with it to learn where it helps and where it harms.
In his experience, small, practical wins from trying, reflecting, and iterating do more to persuade than abstract debate.
The ultimate challenge, for Dibble, is helping students distinguish between using AI to "get better as a human being" and merely using it to "finish tasks." He concluded by quoting Alexander von Humboldt and posed the question of whether AI can be one of those "new organs" that, rightly used, "enable man to ... approximate to a more animated recognition of the universe as a whole," and help us "[awaken] to higher activity."
About the author: Terence Govender
Terence Govender is the Instructional Technology Consultant at IU Columbus, where he supports faculty with AI-informed pedagogy and educational technology. He is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, researching gameful approaches to learning. His interests include AI literacy, game design, and the psychological factors that influence learner motivation and engagement.